


your bets on red

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Mob, M/M, Protectiveness, Robin Christmas Exchange 2019 Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-01-26 08:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21371434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Bruce is soaked down the front with fresh blood, sticky and deep red like raspberry jam. Jason reacts because that's what he does.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 127
Collections: Robin Christmas Exchange 2019





	your bets on red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Salmonellagogo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salmonellagogo/gifts).

> the mob AU where Bruce is the head of the Wayne crime family while Jason is his enforcer/bodyguard. it is largely pre-relationship with a semi-sexy outtake. sorry for the poor execution (hah) of such a perfect prompt. special thank you to wajjs for the beta <33

Jason quits.

Unlike any of the attempts he's made of leaving for good before, there are some things he cannot come back from. 

A little more than two decades of them taking turns throwing in the towel, Bruce pointing to the door and telling him to _ get out _with cold fury in his voice or Jason himself walking out the same door, a stomp in every step like an overused exclamation mark to end every shouting match they've had up until now. And there's been plenty of those. Jason was young once. And in that moment in time, it had still felt like he was making some kind of worthwhile point.

He knows better now.

As self-destructive as he's always been, with a compilation of their troubles stacked up dangerously high, Jason knows he can't be here when it all inevitably comes crashing down. Except Bruce Wayne always has a knack for that, of dragging people in and keeping them there. That too is inevitable.

Twenty years of being at Bruce's side, Jason knows it's about time.

Some things are better over before they can start.

Jason's tie is hanging loose at his throat, but it still feels like a tightening noose around his neck as he runs the scenario through his head. Over and over again like he can change the outcome as the black Audi slows down while Bruce comes out of the lounge, one tinted window comes rolling down on the front passenger side, and then the tell tale count of two consecutive pops. 

Jason reacts because that's what he's trained to do, moving to cover Bruce only to have the man stepping between him and the vehicle, and getting two bullets for his efforts. One hitting the flesh of his shoulder, the other embedding into his side.

As Jason makes that complete turn, he is faced with Bruce Wayne soaked down the front with fresh blood, sticky and deep red like raspberry jam. The consequences of his actions not quite seeping all the way through to the centre yet with the way Bruce just glances down to see the mess across his front. Pain only registering as he goes down in Jason's arms.

The moment doesn't slow, it is a flurry of shouting from everyone else around them.

Jason catches a partial plate and motions to his men to stand down. There are no benefits to gun fire or a full blown shoot-out right in the public eye. The Wayne family hasn't gained this much ground for doing something as reckless as that. It's late but not late enough where there is no foot traffic. Jason has always been a man of action and reaction, he hasn’t been an enforcer for the Wayne family for as long as he has to stand still like _ this_.

But right then and there, with Bruce's blood still warm on him, Jason is rooted to the spot.

Shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, jacket long lost somewhere on the way to the hospital, and Jason's skin is gritty with dried sweat as he sits in a dress shirt stained red in patches.

The door opens. 

A long, drawn out whistle like the man is almost impressed, and then: "You look rough, Jay."

Jason looks up from the chair he's been stewing in since Bruce has been stabilized and transferred to a private room, the plastic back of it digging uncomfortably against his spine. He levels a glare at the man that strolls in. Same black hair. Same blue eyes except without any of the lines at the corners that are permanently etched into Bruce's face, and Jason hates that this is just one of those things he can't help but notice too.

"No thanks to your old man, dickhead." Jason croaks out flatly, bruises under his eyes while Dick chuckles, his grin a bright white thing.

"Pretty sure it's in our blood to do something like that."

"You're adopted." Jason retorts, his eyes flickering to the scar at the side of Dick's head.

"And even when you aren't, you're still part of the family whether you want it or not." Dick says, and it's an old argument. One he's made a hundred thousand times before when he sees the way they are with one another, a painful desperate push on Jason's part to maintain that narrow distance and a returning unrelenting pull on Bruce's. There is no give to it, not when Bruce intends to keep Jason right at his side. "He's already dead set on you."

"Dickie," Jason states in all seriousness because it's the only argument he knows, "he could've died."

"But he didn't." Dick tells him, his hand dragging along one crisp edge of the hospital sheets. The figure lying just beneath it goes still between each slow shallow breath. The smell of hospital disinfectant stings heavily inside of his nose as he follows the same pace. Dick might be known as a distractingly pretty face but he also has a head for the kind of complicated interpersonal ties that make up this family of his. "He's right here with us, and he isn't going anywhere without us."

"I—" Jason tries a second time, "I can't fucking do this, Dick." He scrubs a hand down his face, and there is a moment where Dick almost feels bad enough to go through with lying through his teeth to Jason.

Dick tries to be kind in a life where kindness means doing a bloody favour for someone just to come collecting when they are down on their luck. It means being accustomed to doing the cruel and terrible thing even when given a choice for anything else otherwise. Dick Grayson can be kind but you wouldn't like him when he is. Except this is one of those cruel universal truths that Dick has long since accepted, Jason is hardly stupid, and both of them have known Bruce Wayne since they were children.

"You can tell him that yourself when he's up, but we both know it doesn't matter. You were always his."

Jason signed over his life to the Waynes at sixteen, the precise moment being the first time Alfred pressed a Glock 17 Gen 4 into his hands. 

Dick keenly remembers the moment because he was there with Bruce, they were in the study and Dick’s gaze followed Bruce’s down into the courtyard from where he sat behind his large mahogany desk. Bruce’s eyes crinkled in the corners at the first squeeze of the trigger, his mouth curling in a faint thin line of what could almost be a smile when the kid gave a full body jolt at the recoil.

Dick knows love, and in all its complicated forms, this is clear.

"And Bruce always protects what's his, Jay."

Jason doesn't look convinced. He doesn't need to be. Some things do not take convincing for them to be true.

It's not luck or fate or even karma coming around.

Though arguments could probably be made for any of the above.

When Jason steals the wheels off of a very nice Bentley parked in Crime Alley, it is the current head of the Wayne crime family that catches him red handed with grease staining all of his fingertips pitch black. Jason is thirteen years old, halfway to swinging the tire iron clutched in his hands at the man's midsection before he remembers to think.

"You've got guts, kid." Bruce Wayne says, like anything coming from a man like him could be taken as a compliment.

"I'm no _ kid_, old man." He bites out.

Bruce looks at him, and the even gaze in those icy blue eyes are all that keeps Jason standing upright. He isn't shaking, he just isn't stupid enough to run if anyone bothers with asking.

"So, what's it gonna be?" Vehement to the core, Jason has a tortured little soul that probably has more in common with a cockroach than anything else really. Jason doesn't drop the tire iron and he doesn't stop running his mouth because if he's getting snuffed out, at least he's going to go out with a loud enough bang to make a mess of this man's tailored three-piece suit. "Are you gonna tie me to my own cinder blocks and sink me to the bottom of Gotham Bay? Or are you gonna tie me up in your basement and rip my fingernails out one by one?"

In hindsight, Jason knows the expression on Bruce's face to be amusement, through and through, almost to the point of biting his cheeks bloody to stop himself from snorting out a laugh. In that moment, standing on what feels like Bambi legs, Jason Todd is just trying to keep from throwing up all of his fears onto the man's fancy Italian shoes.

"That's quite a bit of bondage in your scenarios, you trying to tell me something about yourself, kid?"

Jason goes pink, looking ill in the dim yolky yellow of the street lamp from the mouth of the alleyway, and feeling just as much. 

"Fuck you." Jason spits out.

"Not interested in you like that. Maybe when you're a decade older and got a bit more than just skin on those bones." 

Jason's glare is venomous but he swallows down every insult that wants to come free of his viciously sharp tongue. Bruce stares at him, and it makes the hair on Jason's arms rise with the heavy focus placed over him, intent in that assessing gaze. Jason waits, holding his breath.

"Bring me back my tires, help me put them back the way they were, and I'll let you go, no harm done."

Jason looks at him. "How do I know you'll keep your word?"

"You don't." Bruce answers, smiling a chilling little thing. "But what other choice do you really have, kid?"

Here are the things going unsaid but understood: They both know he doesn't need a name or even a good description for anyone Jason knows to give him up without a second thought. If the man wants his petty revenge, he will get it.

So he does as Bruce asks.

This first time, and then all the times after that too. Bruce doesn't keep his promise, not that first time, and definitely not any of the times after that either when he tosses the scrawny little kid into the back of his Bentley and takes him home.

Jason had a whole speech planned, all written up inside of his head and sitting at the tip of his tongue for when Bruce wakes up from his surgery.

He feels like he's aged ten years in the last eight hours sitting by Bruce's bedside. Exhaustion etched into every line on his face, he's changed into the set of clothes Dick brought for him, pulled out of Bruce's personal bag placed just within reach. He's seen Tim come by, and eaten the sandwich he pushed into his hands, chewing mechanically while Tim stayed until he swallowed that last bite.

Except when Bruce finally wakes up, soft groan falling from between chapped lips in the early morning, Jason looks up, and it is a pathetically little noise that breaks out of him.

"So, this is what it takes to get you holding my hand." The man rasps out, glancing down at the loose grip of Jason's fingers placed in the center of his upturned palm.

It's that same amusement, and it drags the righteous fury right out of Jason again when he is catching him at his worst. Jason pulls his hand back, careful of the IV drip still connected to the inside of Bruce's elbow even when he is resolute. Eyes tired, scowl deep, saying. "I fucking quit."

Bruce doesn't take any of it to heart, and it probably has a lot to do with the way he runs things when all of Gotham has always been his to have. Jason included. His voice holding steady, sure in the inevitability of this truth. "You don't mean that." 

"Only if you tell me you didn't mean to take that bullet." Jason makes it harder than it has to be but it is the principle of being Bruce’s right hand man, of making that promise to Alfred the very first time he pulled the trigger, of being there when he cannot.

Except Bruce can't seem to understand that when his answer is this. "It was meant for me, Jay."

Jason’s eyes flash with hurt. "And it was _ my _job to make sure you’re safe. You don’t get to take that away from me."

Bruce reaches out, fingertips cool as he touches the inside of Jason's wrist. Eyes crinkling in the corners, and there is something sincere to an apology he doesn't say when he admits: "I didn't think."

"No, you fucking didn't." Jason bites out each word, frustration rubbing it all painfully raw even as he sets a cup of ice chips into Bruce's hand. 

Bruce can be patient but he never is when it comes to Jason, and it shows blatantly. Jason doesn't make it easy, not when he just faces Bruce with that thin downturn to his mouth, looking downright miserable. Jason doesn't say a thing, makes Bruce brood as the man melts one ice chip inside of his mouth after another, watches him go through half the cup until Jason finally settles back into his seat like he doesn't have one foot out the door.

It is only then that Bruce asks, eyes never having once left the taut pull of Jason's shoulders and all the tension he holds in it. "Now what, Jay?"

"I quit for good and you let me."

It is both a test and not. It is both a fear and a hope. Bruce stays silent for too long, and Jason holds his breath because he wants it but he doesn't. It is all of his years with Bruce all amounting to one thing. Misery loves company, and Bruce wants all of his.

"Jay," a sigh, "you know I can't do that."

Jason takes the glass back from him.

Jason was a nobody before Bruce. He is still a nobody now.

He's got a birth certificate and then a near-death certificate, and that's about as much of a paper trail as he would leave if he ever chooses to get up and go. He lives on borrowed time with a debt that is his to repay. Loyalty like the one he has for Bruce is not bought but earned when it is Bruce Wayne to land every matching blow before personally pulling the trigger on the man that took a crowbar to one of his. 

Jason was fifteen, and the man that picked him up from the street could have dropped him right back at that very same alleyway at every turn of his recovery.

But he didn't.

It has always been a strange thing for Jason to reconcile the two because objectively, he knows Bruce Wayne to be a feared name.

Bruce is a man that has been running the Gotham underworld since he was barely legal to drink. The years before that he had spent building the Wayne family name back up from the sharp plunge from power it took with his parents' execution. His vice grip of the city maintains a status quo with him at the top of the food chain. It's ruthlessness that has treated him well through the years, it is also his lack of fear for getting his hands dirty even when he has the men to do it for him.

Jason becomes one of those men.

The first time Jason kills, he kills for Bruce.

Not on Bruce's behalf or even at his request, not that the difference between the two really matters when the outcome is all the same. And every time after that, it remains that way. He is selfish like that, a true romantic in that messy vengeful kind of way. He walks behind them while they are down on their knees, undoes the safety of his Glock and the noise gets one man whimpering.

Jason is the enforcer, an executioner by any other name.

The men he is to put down are traitors if given the option. And the Wayne family doesn't allow for an option like _ that_.

With devotion nestled at the bottom of his heart, fingers stiff and clenching tight, a death grip in all of the remaining spaces of his chest cavity, easy breath in, uneasy breath out. He squeezes down, _ bang_, and it all goes quiet like the first fall of snow.

What startles him is not the touch of Bruce's hand to the small of his back, it is the way he sinks into it. 

"Thank you, Jay." Bruce murmurs, his voice pitched low, his hand not moving from where he has it. It is grounding in ways it probably shouldn’t be, comforting despite all the wrong signs.

And it gets Jason chuckling weakly because, "that wasn't so bad, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce looks away from the bodies and faces Jason, levels him with one of those expression that says what neither one of them will admit to, not out loud anyway. Because it is an expression that always gets Jason feeling warm just below the collar. It reminds him of being in the manor, still in the midst of his recovery, broken bones in every limb but leaning into the hand Bruce brushes through his hair.

Jason is twenty-one, with death on his hands and blood tracing every single line over his palms. His heart beats a steady heady pulse.

He is halfway through Bruce's jello before he says. "In case you were wondering, Alfred took care of the people responsible."

Bruce looks up sharply from where he is pushing around the bland powder mix mash potatoes on his tray, blinking slow to ask. "Personally?"

Jason nods, and Bruce winces.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

Jason nods again before he is taking another bite of the hospital-grade lime jello he swiped from Bruce’s tray the moment the attending nurse closed the door behind her. "I'd recommend that tea he likes, and probably grovelling."

"He'll know it's you." Bruce gives up all pretenses that he will eat any of this and puts his spoon down with a deep furrow to his brows when his actions effectively dragged Alfred Pennyworth out of retirement.

Jason scrapes his own spoon loudly against the bottom of the jello container, hating how he wants to reach out and fix the way the expression pulls at Bruce's face. "Call it a joint apology then."

"Alfred's never mad at you."

Jason licks his spoon clean, his tongue dyed a bright neon green, but his glare is still an unsettling thing when it is directed at Bruce and Bruce is keenly reminded why Jason Todd is Alfred's prodigy, the only enforcer he's kept at his side after Alfred stepped down. "Because I don't go out of my way to get shot."

"You know why I did—"

"And you know why you can't."

"Jason."

"Don't say it, Bruce."

Bruce bites his tongue. But really, his expression continues to say it all. Jason hates that he can read every tell because Bruce does know, he knows better. Jason remembers what Alfred told him once, that if given the choice be it him or Him, there shouldn't even be a second's worth of thought where Bruce doesn't come first.

Fear left out of every rational thought for self preservation, Jason is not selfless. He just protects what's his too.

"I won't be your downfall." Jason's mouth presses into a thin, flat line. He doesn't want this, he can't have this, but here is Bruce, still dangling the prospect in front of him like it is something made just for him. And it's fucking unfair because when does Bruce Wayne ever make anything easy for him.

"You already are." Bruce sits back, easing against the pillows with a grit in his jaw as the motion tugs at the stitches in his side. "So, what are you going to do now?"

They know each other for far too long for that question to mean anything other than the offer of a choice that does not exist. It is this dance they do, one step forward, one step back, again and again until the floor beneath their feet is worn down to the wood, shine to the lacquer all gone, paint scratched away until only the marrow shows. It's a choice. But are there really any options here when Bruce already made his statement loud and clear when he moved between Jason and the car?

It is a loud declaration of something Jason refuses to name, the thing that Dick keeps hinting at, and also the exact same thing that Tim stumbles upon all on his own when he comes to Jason the night he is adopted as the second heir to the Wayne family and asks why Bruce never took him in as a son. Because the reaction Jason had then is the same he has now. Not unlike a drenched stray dog with his tail between his legs, hair in his eyes, and the saddest fucking downturn to his mouth, Jason knows he should be glad but he just thinks it's worse when Bruce never once made him beg. He never even makes him ask to come home during all those times Jason stepped out in the blind heat of their arguments. 

Because this is what that is, a foregone conclusion. That Jason can never quite quit him.

And the very same can be said for Bruce Wayne too.

bonus.

"Jay, you know you don't hav—"

Jason pulls off of Bruce's cock, hair messy from where Bruce's hands dug in, spit and precum still smearing down his chin. He drags the back of a hand against his mouth to clean off some of the mess, except he doesn't do a very good job when he just spreads it all the way to the sharp cut of his cheekbone. Bruce's eyes go to that, to the faint bruising there from the stint Jason pulled a week ago when Bruce's deal with the Maroni family went south.

Jason cuts his boss off, a determined glint to those eyes burning brighter than any fire Bruce has seen set ablaze. "And if I want to?"

Bruce knows it's hardly fair but he means it even if he shouldn't. "Anything then."

"You're the kingpin of Gotham and you'd fold, just like that?" Jason never knows what to do with all this control that Bruce puts into his hands. The trust leaves him dizzy, and the adoration that Bruce doesn't hide when they are alone makes Jason want to curl in on himself out of embarrassment.

"You sound surprised." Bruce pulls Jason to his feet, both hands going to his hips, pushing him back until he is resting at the edge of the large mahogany desk of his office.

Jason always goes where Bruce leads him. And right now, he has him pushing at the papers until there is a spot cleared. Bruce steps between his legs as soon as Jason settles back, pushes in close until Jason is putting his hands over Bruce's chest, fingers reaching for the buttons, undoing one after another until he is touching skin. Jason dips his head down, presses his mouth to Bruce's neck, sucking at the skin to draw blood to the surface, marking the man just below the collar where no one else gets to see the love bites except for him.

"It's like you keep forgetting I'm just your bodyguard, boss." Jason murmurs, his fingertips tracing across the bullet scars that were supposed to be on his own body. His thumb rubbing at the one at his side, his other hand going to his shoulder. Bruce will never admit to it but Jason always notices the way Bruce aches in those exact places when it rains.

Bruce works Jason out of his pants, makes him lift his hips so he can push the waistband of his briefs down past the sharp cut of his pelvic bone. He captures Jason's mouth as he takes them both in his hand, feels Jason's full body shudder as he works his hand up, grip tight, forcing them both to spill a loud groan into each other's mouth as he swipes a thumb over the head of their cocks.

Bruce kisses Jason again, bruisingly hard, thinking that if every bullet he takes is any indication of his commitment for this kid right here, then he would be ridden with bullets and there would be very little else he would want. Bruce leans back, just far enough so he can catch Jason's eyes. 

Watches as those eyes go wide, thin rings of blue blown with want when he tells him this.

"And it's like you keep forgetting that you’re way more than just that to me."


End file.
